(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Because we also see in Timothy, Timothy is the instructions to a pastor, to Timothy is a young man who is a pastor, an elder of a church, and the Apostle Paul is writing these letters to him and giving him instructions. And he's taught in chapter 4 verse 2 to preach the word, be instant in season out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. So he's instructed here that he needs to be preaching the word of God, whether it's popular or not, it's in season or out of season, and to reprove and rebuke, those are both telling people that they're wrong, and to get right, you know, proving, hey, you're wrong about this, rebuking someone is a little bit stronger, like, you need to get right, and exhort is encouragement. And you do all of those things with all long suffering and doctrine. So you don't just tell people you're wrong without showing them the doctrine, like why you're wrong, well this is what the word of God says, and you do so with long suffering. So you give people, you know, you tell people what's right and what's wrong from the word of God, you prove it to them from the word of God, you show the doctrine from the word of God, and then you use some long suffering to allow it to sink in and to let people get right with God. You don't go, you know, the preacher shouldn't just be like, well, I just preached on that yesterday. Why are you still, you know, why haven't you gotten a haircut yet, or whatever. You use some wisdom to say, okay, I'm going to, you know, let's let that sink in. Now these are good things that you're going to need to use that's going to help you, not just in church, but also in your life, especially if you're married, you know, with your spouse, having long suffering is a very good attribute to have, and it's going to help your marriage tremendously to show some long suffering with the spouse. Turn to Colossians chapter 3. You need to allow for growth in your marriage. Now especially when one spouse is more spiritual than the other, again, like I said before, you know, everyone is at a different level in their life spiritually, you may have gotten married to someone, whether you're a husband or a wife, where your spouse has way more, you know, understanding and knowledge, they've been saved longer, they know more, and it doesn't matter if it's the husband or the wife, you need to be able to have the long suffering towards your potentially more carnal spouse, and to give them the opportunities to grow, and you know, it might even be harder for a wife, because the wife doesn't have the role of leading the home spiritually. So you're going to have to learn to be able to stay within the bounds that God has put on you in your role, and be able to, you know, communicate with your husband, yes, and be able to help your husband without usurping the authority that God has given you within the marriage, just because you feel like, well, I know more than he does. Okay, so that's a difficult thing you might overcome, but then, you know, husbands, if you are the spiritual leader, which you ought to be anyways, and you know more, and you have much more knowledge and depth in your relationship, there's a verse here, 1, in Colossians chapter 3, that we're going to look at, look at verse number 18, about his wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. So you know, if your wives are doing something wrong, and you need to correct them, you know, don't be bitter against your wife. You know, don't let that fester and whatever, you know. If you have long suffering, then that bitterness shouldn't ever happen anyways. You just allow, say, you know what, I'm going to, you know, we're going to let things go, we're going to let things slide. This worked out, you know, in my marriage, when my wife and I got married, I was saved for a lot longer than my wife was. My wife was a much newer believer, and in our marriage, there were some things, you know, as the husband, as the head of the household, and by the authority of God, I was saying, you know what, there's certain things that are just, this is the way it is, and it's not going to be allowed, and not tolerated in my household. Right, there were certain things that I said, this is going to be, you know, you're going to have to work within these confines, because these are the rules of the house. And obviously, you say things in a way, you know, I'm being a little bit more blunt with my terminology, just so everyone understands kind of what was done, but you do things in a way where you can talk with your wife, and say, look, this is really important, you show from scripture, and this is something we had to go through when we first got married, and say, okay, look, you know, I know you might be used to this, but we really need to do this, because this is what the Bible says. But then there's other things that I already knew that were not right, but because my wife was a newer believer, I had to just let go, and I'm just going to allow that, and I'm going to suffer that, because one, you can't just expect people to change, like, everything about them that's wrong in a very short period of time. Because what's going to happen is, one, it's actually not going to be encouraging to them, they're going to feel like they can't do anything right, and want to give up, instead of, you know, learning and growing, and it's like expecting, you know, if someone's a new Christian, new believer, it's like a newborn baby, you know, you can't expect that, okay, okay, you know, newborn, get up and run the marathon right now, and sprint to the finish line, you know, like, that's crazy, illogical, you can't expect that. So you have to work within the bounds of what's reasonable, and you have to learn how to be long suffering, and say, you know what, I don't really like this at all, but I'm not going to say anything about that, I'm just going to let that go for a while, because I'm going to allow this person space to grow.